Advancements in wireless communication technology have greatly increased the versatility of today's wireless communication devices. These advancements have enabled wireless communication devices to evolve from simple mobile telephones and pagers into sophisticated computing devices capable of a wide variety of functionality such as multimedia recording and playback, event scheduling, word processing, e-commerce, etc. As a result, users of today's wireless communication devices are able to perform a wide range of tasks from a single, portable device that conventionally required either multiple devices or larger, non-portable equipment.
Various technologies are utilized for locating the position of a wireless communication device. Some mobile positioning technologies are based on network-based positioning (NBP), in which a network communicating with a mobile device obtains indications of signal measurements made by a mobile device and computes the position of the device within the network. This is in contrast to mobile-based positioning (MBP), in which a mobile device measures signals from a network and estimates its own position. Applications of NBP and MBP include personal navigation, social networking, and targeting of content (e.g., advertisements, search results, etc.), among others.
Conventionally, a high number of APs are used in an NBP system for positioning a given mobile device. However, as the amount of network load associated with positioning increases proportionally to the number of APs used for positioning, use of a high number of APs results in a relatively high amount of positioning load in the network. Further, conventional NBP systems select APs for obtaining an initial position estimate for a mobile device arbitrarily and/or according to schemes that do not account for the positions of the APs relative to the area. This may result in a loss of positioning accuracy in the event that selected APs are too close or too far away from each other.